


Guilt

by silvereyedbitch



Category: Coldfire Trilogy - C. S. Friedman
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-28
Updated: 2013-12-28
Packaged: 2018-01-06 11:48:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1106453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silvereyedbitch/pseuds/silvereyedbitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They have reached the point where Tarrant is confronting Calesta on Mt Shaitan and Damien is thinking over things. He then experiences visions that reveal Tarrant’s secret love for him. Done in Damien’s POV pretty much.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Guilt

Disclaimer: Again, I don’t own these guys, just like to fart around with their actions.

Setting/Summary: They have reached the point where Tarrant is confronting Calesta on Mt Shaitan and Damien is thinking over things. He then experiences visions that reveal Tarrant’s secret love for him. Done in Damien’s POV pretty much. Have fun!

Warning: M/M, D&G, no explicitness.

GUILT

A demon. Evil incarnate. Take all of the horrors and unfairness and unhappy endings in the entire world, and it still wouldn’t equate to the darkness that permeates your being, your essence. Unclean. Could there be anything worse than you in the entirety of my existence and experience? I think not. I have seen bad people do bad things. And yet, even they still possessed some spark of morality, of humanity. Not so with you. You reap innocence and devour the harvest without remorse. Guiltless. It is your nature in this current state of being, this undead existence. But I wonder, how much of nature and of nurture is it comprised of? Surely you did not begin your mortal life this depraved? I can only hope that your past identity would revile what lies before me now. There is nothing that you could do to alter this view. You have lived too long in the shadow of the Unnamed’s malevolence to ever change.  
How many ways do I hate you? Despise you? I couldn’t begin to count them. At every turn in our travels together, you have shown me how utterly corrupt a heart can become. And you told me you would bring this to my own soul? Never! It is not I who will change, and I don’t think it is you either. But death will solve this question for us and alleviate me of this burden. I hate myself for feeling any kindness toward you. I see it as weakness in my faith, no matter how I wish you could change, you never will. Everything serves your purpose…even now. I am sure that when this is over, I will finally see how this fits in with your plans, your schemes. Any minute now I expect you to turn to me and betray me. Either by turning to run, or throwing me to the proverbial wolves, or…whatever. It’s going to happen; and I brace myself for it…  
And then you are falling to the ground before me, not even 10 yards away. The power of your perfect sacrifice, offered in a willingness that brings tears to my eyes, washes over me, through me. I can feel your terror within that wave. The hope of your own happy ending fading away into the ether. And in that happy ending, I see… No, what I see is a mistake, a misinterpretation of a dying man’s thoughts twisted across a bond forged in demonic blood. It cannot be! And I reject it! But the feelings keep coming, pummeling me with their endless weight. And then they are no longer feelings and emotions, but images as well. And they dance before my eyes, showing me the depth of my miscalculations, the endless supply of my own prejudice…  
I can see myself! I am the first thing you see when you awaken again after your fiery imprisonment at the hands of that insane sorceress. The shock that fills you when you realize what I have done is too immense to absorb all at once. In all your long existence, you never once had anyone do what I had just done. And all of this while we are still, technically, enemies. Of course, after time and weeks have passed, you have convinced yourself that it was a self-serving rescue that I had performed. After all, what chance had we without your powers? And this rationalization causes me to become introspective for a moment and reconsider that time period and my own actions and decisions that day. I find my answer. And you are wrong. Wrong. And this vision fades with my pronouncement.   
There I am, alone in the hold of the ship, asleep on that tiny little bunk on our way across the sea. I am tossing in the midst of one of your fashioned nightmares. I can feel the hunger inside of you as I watch myself through your eyes. It is an emptiness no amount of sustenance can ever fill, frightening in how much self-control it requires of you to hold back. You were holding back! And then another night passes by in the same manner. And another. Each night, you came and watched me suffer, and at first I am angered by this further invasion of my privacy. Hadn’t you seen enough of my suffering?! But then, about three months into the trip, if I can judge by the condition of how my body appears, something changes. You approach the side of my bed as I roll fitfully in my terrorized dreams. I watch with your vision and mistake your intentions, becoming angered even further…until I see you reach out and place your hand upon my burning brow. The cold contact of your skin on mine quiets the heated nightmare almost immediately, and I relax back into an untroubled rest. You then look at your hand as if in wonder at what you’ve just done, and you leave the room. Quickly, very quickly.   
Perhaps three or four weeks later, there is a night when you watch me leave to go bed down. We had just been discussing how exhausted I was from your nightmares, but how I was going to keep it up anyway with my usual stubbornness. You watch me go, and then you close your eyes. When you open them again, time has passed, and I am surely asleep now in my cabin. You reach out at my dreams…and stop, thoughtful, considering. And then you start again, but this time you slowly weave a pattern of dreams that takes me into a truly deep and restful slumber. And when you are done, you lean back against a railing and watch the sea, wondering what is becoming of you. These kinds of instances happen more and more frequently throughout our voyage. I had no idea! How ungrateful I feel now, when you had shown such untoward kindness. You went hungry those nights when you were already starving as it was! The feelings inside you are so muddled and confused that I can make neither heads nor tails of them, and I don’t think you can either.  
A flash forward, and I see from far above the trees. You are searching for Hesseth and me. We were captured by the Terrata, but you only know that we have disappeared completely. The slow panic I feel building inside you is strange. This is not the emotion I would have expected upon our disappearance or even our deaths. Anger perhaps, but not this deep seated urgency to find me, to help me, to see me…strange.  
Again, we jump in time, and the vision I see before me through your eyes is the night of the One God’s intervention on Jenseny’s behalf. So painful is the experience for you that you flee from us into the woods. Your thoughts are jumbled, full of guilt, and anger, suffering…and a desire to experience that which is denied you that would knock me over if I was here in the physical sense. You (we) hear something in the woods behind us. It is me, having followed you from our campsite. We speak, and you are filled with resentment. But, when I finally leave, and as you watch me go in a secretive way, I can feel the gratitude that is buried under everything else. I can feel the…longing? That can’t be ri…..  
The next scene is thrown at me before I can finish thinking on the prior. You have betrayed me to the Undying Prince. And…oh! It cuts you deeply to do this! I knew you felt some regret, but this…it burns inside of you as an acidic poison. Even giving me the knife, our one chance, doesn’t slow the feelings of guilt and pain of knowing what you caused me to feel. And when I rescue you from the dawn…when I cut you free of that crystal, though you are only half-conscious, you know I am there. You know, and you feel something strong burst inside of you, and it fills you with an unfamiliar heat. Before you can focus on it, though, you begin to slide into unconsciousness. You can allow yourself to do this now, though, because you know, you know, I will watch over you. I will be there for you when you wake. And everything goes dark.  
Later…you are ashamed when you must act out your aggression to slake your benefactor’s thirst for violence and evil. Ashamed! And it is not solely because of the Divining given to Toshida…no. That was merely the pebble that began the landslide. All of the things, the small kindnesses, newfound emotions that you are constantly trying to repress…all of these need to be atoned for. And so you try. And when you show up with that girl to bring with you on the long voyage home, you tell yourself it is a good thing, an evil thing you are doing. But you are really trying to maintain a distance between us. The newly reanimated violence of your nature combined with my constant revulsion at your treatment of the girl serves your purposes just fine. And then, she is driven to suicide. But not by what I thought… You are having dreams, nightmares, as well, and they are what drove her insane eventually. What kinds of nightmares does the Hunter suffer from?.…they involve me, I can tell that, but these visions I am caught up in are not wholly mine to control. It seems I can only experience or know what you yourself were thinking or feeling at the time, and you are not keen at all to focus on those unpleasant dreams. Odd. It is also odd how you seem to take a singular kind of pleasure in the fact that I offer to feed you again with my own nightmares. It isn’t a pleasure born of evil intent, though…it seems…almost…  
We are home again, and you have occupied the basement room to my rented apartment. You are…taken. The memories of being engulfed suddenly by the blackest of mists, of suffering, agony, a fear that peels each muscle and nerve fiber layer by layer…stop it! Stop! The vision falters…and then resumes with you (us) hanging cruciform in the lair of the Unnamed. Hope is no longer even possible for you. You have retreated far inside yourself in an effort to hide as much of yourself as possible from your master, but it is in vain. Master of every form of pain and suffering, the Unnamed merely finds ways to draw you out and apply more and more various forms of torture to your battered soul. Pain of the body doesn’t even affect you anymore, so wounded is your spirit. And when I arrive with Karril at my side, something stirs to life within you. You feel me there. And now you are truly afraid. But not for yourself…for me…wave after wave of anxiety rolls through you. Worry for my safety; mine! Your fears are unfounded, though, because I am able to bullshit my way through a negotiation that I wonder over even today.  
When next your eyes open, and you behold me there beside you, waiting for you…your decision is made. You only have to make it all seem like my idea so that I don’t suspect. You will sacrifice yourself for everyone, but not truly everyone. No. You are truly sacrificing yourself for…me. So that I may have a chance to inherit your vision of Earth. You put on a good show that you don’t want to research Iezu and all that, but your quick mind and brutal intelligence has discovered the answers already. The sacrifice will be perfect. And you plan it alone. Because to allow me to find out your innermost feelings concerning me…your innermost…feelings…concerning…me… Oh, my…God… This is why your sacrifice means so much! You have not given yourself for a world of faceless strangers. No. You have given over your life for the one you…love…and will never be able to tell him so… Oh, Gerald. No… And the visions cease as your life ends. Gerald…  
But I haven’t even the time to think on these revelations. The Iezu mother has gathered over you and is doing something, creating something. Her images, her language, washes over me, and I know now about the Iezu and her own struggles. It is unbelievably overwhelming. Beside me, Karril is just as stricken. And after a time, she withdraws from you, and I realize from her visions that you are not dead. You are not dead! You live! And I rush to your side and slide to my knees painfully, but I don’t care. I need to see. I need confirmation. And yes. There it is. The shallow rise of your chest. I take your hand in mine, and my other I place on your chest. I just watch you for a few minutes, thinking over all of the revelations I have been shown. Thinking of how I feel about them. And it all clicks suddenly. “I love you,” falls from my lips before I can catch it, but I can’t tell if you heard or not. It’s just as well, because I am still sorting out my conflicting emotions and perspectives. There was a time in the very close past when I would have watched your fall and mourned the tragedy that was your life, but not the man I have before me at present.  
And now, looking into your silver eyes, as they open again for the last first time, I can’t help but feel relief. I feel untold gratitude towards your new benefactor. And amidst my newfound happiness, through the surface of my palms, I can once again feel the cold of your darkened soul flowing through my skin and permeating my own spirit. And even though you haven’t yet truly begun to change for the good, your contact feels different somehow… Not unclean anymore, but accepted; no longer frigid with coldfire, but warm to me; welcome. And that scares me more than anything. Because if you are becoming this…then what am I becoming? 

E/N: Hope y’all enjoyed it. Just wanted to put a different spin on some of the scenes in the books. Gotta run!


End file.
